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PRES. HOPKINS'S 

18 6 9. 



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SPIRIT, SOUL AND BODV. 






BxiCCALAUREATE SERMON, 



DELITERED AX 



WILLIAMSTOWN, MS 



JUNE 20, 1869. 



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BY MAKK HOPKINS, D. D 

President of Wii-i-iams CoLiiEGE, 



f ttWisl^£b fag llqutsl 0f % CIhss. 




BOSTON: 

PRESS OF T. E,. MARYIN & SON, 131 CONGRESS STREET. 

NEW YORK :— SHELDON & COMPANY. 

18 6 9. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
T. R. Makvin & Son, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



SERMON 



I. THESSALONIANS t. 23. 

AND I PBAY GOD TOUR WHOLE SPIRIT, AND SOTJli, AND BODY, BE PRESERVED 
BLAMELESS UNTO THE COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. 

If man would know what he may hope, or attempt, under 
God's natural government, he must know what he is in his 
nature, and in the powers which God has given him. If, again, 
he would know what he may hope for under God's moral govern- 
ment, he must know what his character is. He must know his 
tendencies, and the direction of his voluntary activity. 

Hence self-knowledge is in two directions. The question may 
be. What am I? What nature have I? What powers? Am 
I in the image of God as created by Him? Am I in the image 
of the brute as developed from him ; or rather from that ? Have 
these powers immortality as separate and conscious? Or are 
they mere upheavals of an infinite, underlying, unconscious force 
into which they will again sink, and all separate consciousness be 
lost ? Or, again, the question may be, What is my real char- 
acter? Disguises aside, and the glozings of self-love. What are 
my deepest tendencies ? What is that supreme end to which all 
else is subordinated ? 

If a man would know himself fully, both these questions must 
1)6 fully answered. He must know his powers, and he must 
know the direction of their activity. 

To which of these forms of knowledge the injunction of the 
ancient oracle, " Know thyself," referred, or whether to both, it 



may be difficult to say. Probably to the first chiefly, because a 
knowledge of character could have no such place or importance 
under any heathen system as under Christianity. Such knowl- 
edge would not have been philosophy, and could have gratified 
no pride ; it would not have been religion, and could have 
secured no reward. There was among the heathen generally no 
such knowledge of sin as to reveal to them either the importance 
or the difficulty of this kind of knowledge. Accordingly the 
current of speculation, so far as it had man for its object, was in 
the direction of the powers. So was it with Plato, and so has it 
been with the philosophers since. They have sought, and are 
still seeking, to give us the constituents, and to unfold the nature 
of man. Here, as in other sciences, the obstacle is chiefly igno- 
rance, or a limitation of our powers. 

With. Christianity, however, this is reversed. That assumed 
that man is in the image of God, and is to live hereafter. And 
then, assuming also sin, and making destiny turn upon character, 
it gives to the knowledge of that an importance impossible under 
any other system. Hence the apostolic precept, "Examine 
yourselves," and the great standing duty of self-examination in- 
culcated by the church, refer, not at all to the nature and powers, 
but wholly to the character and moral state of the man. Here, 
however, the obstacle is not simply ignorance from limitation of 
the powers, but from a liability to self-deception. The most 
difficult honesty in this world for a man to practice is to be 
honest with himself w^hen he has done wrong, or desires to do so. 

From this importance of character, and the difficulty thus 
originating, there has arisen a great department of Christian 
literature, that of self-examination for religious ends, to which 
there is nothing similar in heathen literature. There is, perhaps, 
something analogous to it, as the blindness, and inconsistencies, 
and folly of vice and of self-love have been made the objects of 
analysis and of satire. Into this region of character, of desire 
and passion and purpose, the \satirist and the philosopher look, 



and, according to their temperament, find food for self-compla- 
cency, or scorn, or misanthropy. Not so the Saviour. Into 
this region He looks, and beholding with an infinite pity its 
ao-itations and turbid tossinjsjs as of a troubled sea that cannot 
rest, he says, " Peace, be still." 

But while the Scriptures thus magnify the knowledge of char- 
acter, and assume, rather than teach, the truths of philosophy, 
they do not, in thus assuming, ignore those truths. They rather 
receive them in the most radical and effectual way, making them 
pervasive, as the atmosphere, so that while they will never be 
obtrusive, their presence will be always felt, and their true nature 
will be constantly, though incidentally, gleaming out. So it is 
in the text. The object of the Apostle here is wholly moral. 
His eye is on the blamelessness of those whom he addressed and 
the results of that in the coming day ; and yet, incidentally, he 
teaches us the true theory of our nature. In opposition to the 
current philosophy of our day certainly, if not of his, which 
teaches that man is composed of soul and body, the Apostle 
teaches that he is composed of spirit, and soul, and body. 
"A.nd I pray God that your whole spirit, and soul, and body, 
be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

Let us then inquire for a little into the grounds of this dis- 
tinction, — a distinction riot new, but generally accepted, in the 
primitive church. That we accept it is not necessary to our sal- 
vation ; still, if Christianity is to stand in its full beauty, and 
reach its full power, its implied and underlying truths must be 
rightly held. If they are not, there will be constant outcropping s 
of errors and inconsistencies on which skeptics and scoffers will 
take their stand, and jeer and mock the passing pilgrim. 

The difficulties in the way of comprehending those underlying 
powers or parts of our nature of which the Apostle speaks, and 
which have thrown and still throw obscurity around them , are 
found in three words, as they are applicable to man and related 



6 

to each other. These are unity, complexity, and progj^ssive- 
ness. ^lan is a unity ; he is also complex, and progressive. 

First, then, man is a unity. This we know by our conscious- 
ness. We affirm it by necessity, and cannot doubt it. He is a 
unity, but not a unit. What a unit is, or rather what is a unit, 
and whether there be one in this universe, I know not. A grain 
of sand is no more a unit than the universe is. A unit has no 
parts. A unity is made up of parts that find their unity in their 
relation to each other and to their common end. The eye is a 
unity. It is one thing, one eye, but it is made up of six prin- 
cipal parts, and if any one, or certainly two of these be removed, 
it will cease to be an eye. And so man is a unity, commonly 
supposed to be constituted of soul and body. The body is not 
the man, the soul is not the man, but the two united. 

Such is the unity. But even as thus regarded, what complex- 
ity have we. For first, the body is a unity ; and in it is a sys- 
tem for digestion, and that is a unity ; and one for circulation, 
and that is a unity ; and there are systems for secretion, and res- 
pu'ation, and locomotion, and sensation, and thought, and each 
of these is a imity. Then also the soul is a unity. But that is 
made up of intellect, and sensibility and will ; and each of these 
is a unity, while all are to be combined into the higher unity that 
is to make the one man. 

What now is that one thing which binds together these several 
systems and makes them one ? Whatever it be, the complexity 
is so great that the mystery of the unity will not be increased if 
we make it greater. It is to be said, too, that beiogs are higher 
in the scale in proportion to their complexity. This is on the 
principle that that which is higher becomes so by having all that 
is below it with something added. If, therefore, to body and 
soul we add spirit, we raise man in dignity, and increase no diffi- 
culty or mystery. 

But besides this difficulty in comprehending man from the 
complexity of his unity, we find another from his progressive- 



ness. This requires the unity to be preserved not only in the 
midst of complexity, but through such changes in the mode of 
life and forms of the being that it is difficult to recognize its 
identity. At birth, all the instrumentalities of a former life are 
dropped. At that point there is not merely progression, but a 
new mode of being. There are objects, and instrumentalities, 
and forms of being, inconceivable before. And then, from that 
point, what progression ! What a change from the infant uttering 
its first faint cry, to a Newton trembling with joy as he grasps 
the problem of the heavens ! What a change again from that 
same infant, still preserving its unity, to the coffined dust, and 
to the possibilities for the spirit of the untried and unending 
scenes that lie beyond death ! 

The full problem of man then is, first, — first practically, 
though not logically, — that of his end and of his law as derived 
from that. This is the problem of Moral Philosophy, and is for 
all. It is therefore explicitly revealed. Here we have the moral 
law, the great law of love. We have secondly the problem of 
what man has been, and is, and may become, in the unity of a 
complex and progressive being that has undergone one entire 
change in the mode of its life, and is destined either to undergo 
another, or to go out in annihilation. This involves the prob- 
lems of metaphysical philosophy, around which a sea of contro- 
versy has always surged. To be truly man, the being must re- 
tain throughout, the constituents which make him man. Are 
these, then, body and soul? Or are they body, soul, and spirit? 
Is there a spirit distinguishable from the soul, though perhaps 
not separable from it, as the soul is distinguishable from the 
body ? When the ruins of the fall shall be retrieved, and the 
ravages of a penal death shall be repaired, is it these three, 
spirit, soul and body, instinct with an immortal vigor, and in a 
union attempered to the harmonies of heaven, that shall go to 
make up the one redeemed and perfect man ? This is our in- 
quiry, for so the Apostle seems to say. 



8 

First, then, reversing, for convenience, the order of the text, 
what is the body ? and what is its relation to the soul ? 

The body is commonly supposed to be mere matter. It is 
not. It is organized living matter built up by unconscious force, 
and includes both the matter and the force. A tree is nothing 
but body. A tree is not the mere matter which we see. It is 
far rather that unseen force that has worked from the first 
moment of germination, and deposited every particle, and pro- 
truded every branch, and scolloped every leaf, and has made 
the tree to be a maple tree instead of an elm. In every living 
organism it is this mimic soul working out the pattern of its 
home after its kind, that is the wonder of nature and the ground 
of our sympathy with her. This unconscious force it is, with 
the organism it thus holds in its grasp and charge, that is the 
body. This is the same in us as in the tree, except that in us it 
is made moveable, and is taken up into relation to a higher life. 
In us, indeed, the body is a double set of organs, one of which 
builds up and repairs by an involuntary force another set for the 
use of the soul. 

This force then that builds the house I live in, that digests my 
food and circulates my blood and fashions organs for my use, 
this house and these organs — are they a part of myself ? For 
the time being, yes, and so a part of myself that without them 
I am not a man. They are not my personality, but without 
them that unity which makes me a man is gone. Except as a 
part of myself that house and these organs become a corpse and 
return to their original elements ; and as separated from these 
the soul passes we know not where, and exists we know not 
how. 

What the link may be between this life of nutrition and the 
higher life of the soul, I know not. Let those who are troubled 
by the mystery of a Trinity in unity, resolve the mystery of a 
unity of two hundred and four bones, each separately formed ; 
and of the muscles, more numerous still, that cover them ; and 



9 

of the stomach and blood-vessels that build them up ; and of the 
nerves that run through them ; and of the brain that crowns 
them; and* of all these, moved and built up by an unconscious 
force with the higher life of the conscious and intelligent soul, so 
as to become its servant. That was its purpose. It was that 
all these, in their unity, should become the servant of the soul. 
So it ought, but the reality and power of the higher unity is 
seen in the fact that the soul may, instead, become the servant 
of it. It is possible for the life of the whole man to be cen- 
tered, and by deliberate choice, in the nutritive life and the pas- 
sion? that connect themselves immediately with that. So is it 
with whole tribes of savages, I say not nations, for at this point 
of elevation the idea of a nation does not dawn. So is it with 
gluttons, gourmands, epicures. The stomach is the centre of 
life, and the intelligence is used to serve that. The soul keeps 
house in its kitchen. This is the point to be noticed here, that 
that which gives unity to the whole, and is truly the man, can, 
and does take up its abode and find its life in this lower part of 
our complex being to the neglect of all that is above, and so 
becomes "of the earth, earthy." In the language of Scriptm^e, 
the man becomes ^^ carnal. ^^ 

With the intelligence thus employed, the higher aesthetic, and 
moral, and religious powers can find no proper objects or scope, 
and all their manifestations in the direction of art and of religion 
will be either fantastic or hideous. Voluntarily placing himself 
on a level with the brute, passion will run riot, and through 
superstitions, and unnatural cruelties and lusts, the higher 
powers will avenge themselves by degrading the man below the 
brute. 

Such is the body, consisting of the power that builds it, and 
the structure built. In its present materials and functions — some 
of them at least — it cannot be permanent ; but with some mate- 
rial, and with some functions through which the soul shall be in 



10 

relation to a material universe it must be forever a constituent 
of a complete humanity. 

We next inquire respecting the soul. In inquiring after the 
body, we simply needed to transfer to man the nutritive life of 
plants, adding however the organs built up by that life for the 
use of the soul. In inquiring after the soul, we transfer to him 
again the sensitive, instinctive and directive life of the animal, 
adding aU that is built up by these and that may be conjoined 
with them for the use of the spirit. Animals have instincts, and 
directive powers, and natural affections, and something of what 
Kant and Coleridge call understanding. They have powers 
correlated to this fixed order of nature by which they provide 
for themselves in it, and for the most part secure to themselves 
aU the good of which they are capable. This is the special 
characteristic of the soul, that under the guidance of instinct and 
of intelligence in the form of prudence, it deals consciously with 
a fixed order of things — a nature. 

In respect to this, the animal and man run into each other by 
imperceptible shades. In its lower forms instinct is perfect. 
There is a tendency on the one hand, and a provision on the 
other, and well-being is secured. But among the higher animals 
there is diversity. Difierent animals of the same species will 
pursue different courses under the same circumstances. They 
have diversities of feature and of characteristics. They have 
some power of generalization and of inference. They assume 
what are called first truths. J£ an animal does not state to itself 
the proposition that causation and the laws of nature are uniform, 
it yet proceeds upon it. If a bee does not put it into a geomet- 
rical treatise that a straight line is the shortest distance between 
two points, it yet takes. a bee line when it has freighted itself 
with honey and would go to its home. Here man has all that 
the animal has and something more, though of the same kind. 
Rooted in the same soil, he is as the towering tree with its 
branches and leaves and tasseled blossoms tossing and fragrant, 



11 

beside the lichen hard by on the rock, or the moss at its root. 
Through his understanding, and the instruments with which he 
is endowed, especially the hand, man is perfectly fitted to deal 
intelligently with a fixed order of things, to profit by experience, 
and to subdue such an order wholly to himself; and whatever 
powers may be necessary to put him into relation with this order, 
and to give him dominion over it, belong to the soul. To this 
belongs the recognition and articulate statement of what have 
been called the first truths of pure reason, those necessary 
afiirmations, always the same, which are implied in reasoning, 
and through which alone reasoning can fully understand itself. 
On these, however, the brutes act as well as ourselves, and they 
have been unduly exalted into the highest ground of difference 
between man and the brutes. To this belongs the reasoning 
power, and so the power of controlling the mightiest forces 
through a knowledge of their laws, and of combining materials 
anew at the behest of use and of beauty. Through this, man 
can construct machinery, and use fire, and the metals, and steam, 
and lightning, and the printing press ; can act on the distant and 
the future, and can rise to the conception of law. Through 
language, experience and all knowledge can be diffused and 
transmitted, so that not only, as with the brutes, the individual 
may be improved, but the race may make progress. 

Finding his centre and life in the soul and in nature, man 
looks no longer downward, but outward. At first he cowers 
before the forces of nature and deifies them ; but at length he 
comes to know them as uniform and controls them ; and how far 
this control may go it is impossible to say. Through machinery 
man is already laying off on to nature his heaviest burdens. 
Already he spans continents with the iron track. He makes the 
bed of the ocean the track of his thought. He evokes from a 
drop of water the power to send that thought with a speed that 
makes the swift-rolling earth but a laggard, and confounds our 
notions of time. He takes apart the mechanism of nature, 



12 

analyzing it into its elements. He traces force through its subtle 
transformations. He seizes the light from the farthest star and 
wrenches from it the secrets of its home. He may yet, who 
knows? navigate the air, and parties be seen careering and 
bicycling through it. Through chemistry he may combine the 
elements into food without the labor of tilling the soil. 

With such a world for his home, and such powers at his com- 
mand, civilization will have ample materials and scope. Now 
there will be nations, and cities, and wealth, and art; now the 
Parthenon and the Coliseum. Now refinement will take the 
place of barbarism, manners will be polished, and nothing that 
can minister to comfort, or taste, or luxury will be wanting. 
Now the full capacity of man for achievement and enjoyment 
within the limits of nature will be reached. Here we have the 
sphere of what, in the Scriptures, is called " the natural man." 

But in all this man can know nothing but this rounded, 
limited, necessitated frame-work of uniformities. Except in the 
mere notion of it, sapless and powerless, he can know nothing of 
anything that will put him in relation with what is above or 
beyond the horizon of time. What can such a system know, 
what can it utter, of anything beyond itself? Hence the time 
has come for the reign of sense, and of experiment, and of 
positive science. Now, what man can see, and touch, he knows, 
and only that. What belongs to the on-goings of this visible 
system is real to him, and only that. Now art is not fantastic ; 
it may reach high perfection : but what of religion ? Religion ! 
what need have we of that? God ! what need of him? Have 
we not force, uniform force, and do not all things continue as 
they were from the beginning of the creation, if it ever had a 
beo'innins:? Have we not the To Pan, the universal All, the 
soul of the universe working itself up from unconsciousness 
through molecules, and maggots, and mice, and marmots, and 
monkeys, to its highest culmination in man? Certainly no God 
is needed, a miracle is impossible, or if possible it cannot be 



13 

proved even by the senses, and the idea of a revelation is absurd. 
If the religious nature must find some resting place, let it make 
the unconscious universe with its sleeping capabilities its god ; 
or let it frame to itself the conception of a god whose work is 
finished, and who is enjoying himself in everlasting repose. 
This is, indeed, just what those who practically ignore the spirit 
have always done and are doing now. Yearning and groping 
after something higher, yet recognizing only necessary relations 
as in mathematics, and the uniform and unconscious forces of 
nature, they transfer what they thus find, and only that, over to 
the infinite. Of this the result may reveal itself in different 
forms, and under different names. In India it may be Brahmin- 
ism or Budhism. In Germany it may be transcendentalism, or 
positivism, or pantheism. In this country it may be an humble 
imitation and jumble of them all ; but the thing itself and its 
paralysing effect on the religious character will be essentially the 
same, whether at Benares, at Berlin, or at Boston. 

Such is the soul. Some would make it include only instinct 
and sensation. I would make it include the intellect of man, 
perceptive, and combinative, with those endowments which fit 
him to be a denizen of this world, to serve himself of its sub- 
stances, and to have dominion over it by the adjustment of its 
forces for the accomplishment of his own ends. It knows of 
nature, and of science and art within that, but of nothing 
beyond. 

We next turn to the spirit. We here pass into an entirely 
different region, and hence infer a difference of soul and spirit. 
If there be a distinct function, there must be a distinct organ ; 
and certainly sense is not more different from intellect than 
intellect is from the power of spiritual apprehension. We here 
pass entirely away from and above anything that belongs to the 
animal, or to which his acts can have relation, and come to the im- 
mediate knowledge of moral law, of a personal God, of our filial 
relation to him as made in his image, and of our responsibility 



14 

to him. ^Ve come to all that is involved in prayer, in commu- 
nion with God, in loving him, and in making him our portion. 
We come also to that brotherly kindness of which the Apostle 
speaks, and by which we love our fellow-men as the spiritual 
children of a common Father. This is the region of the spirit, 
and of all this the brute knows absolutely nothing. He has 
nothing in common with us in it. We here reach the region of 
personalities, and sanctities, of that which calls for respect, and 
awe, and veneration, and worship. Of all this the experience is 
impossible, not only to the brutes, but to mere intellect, or to 
taste knowing only beauty. The logical faculty with its con- 
cepts and notions cannot compass it. The intuitions of the pure 
reason do not give it, for " that which is spiritual is spiritually 
discerned." There is a discernment by the spirit, not merely of 
ideas and relations, as by the intellect, but of qualities as meeting 
a taste and a want. " O taste and see that the Lord is fifood." 
The brute cannot say that ; the intellect cannot say it ; nothing 
can say it but that which has immediate apprehension in the 
region of spirit as sense has in that of matter." Either this is, or 
there is for us no spirit, no personality, no God. It is through 
sensation, which is feeling, and perception, which is knowledge, 
that we are conversant with matter, and in our knowledge of the 
material world these are blended. So they are in the meaning 
of the words that express that knowledge. The word house, 
includes both a sensation and a perception. And so it is with 
the spirit in its knowledge of spiritual things. There is intuition, 
apprehension, knowledge, but so blended with feeling that they 
become one and receive a common name. Only thus could we 
have such words as obligation, righteousness, adoration, love, 
that is rational love, holiness, and godliness. These imply 
spirit in immediate communication with spirit, as sense-percep- 
tion and words from that, imply intelligence in immediate 
communication with matter. And as we have from our inter- 
course with matter, sense-perception, including both feeling 



15 

and knowledge, so do we have from our intercourse with 
spirit, senti-^ment, that is, from its etymology, immediate appre- 
hension of mind or spirit, and including both intuition and 
emotion. This is the characteristic of spirit, that it does not 
deal with gross matter, touching, tasting, handling ; that it does 
not analyze, and abstract, and combine, and induce, and deduce 
logically ; but that it blends and fuses the intuition of that which 
is highest, with emotion; and so approves, and condemns, and 
loves, and rejoices with a "joy unspeakable and full of glory," 
and wonders, and adores. So does it become "the rapt seraph 
that adores and burns." 

This immediate apprehension just spoken of in the region of 
the invisible and the spiritual, is said by some to be by faith, and 
it is on this that they base their definition of faith. But since 
evil as well as good spirits must have this apprehension, such 
faith, if it be faith at all, cannot be that required by the Gospel. 

But would not man be a moral being without the knowledge 
of God? Yes. His moral nature would affirm obligation to 
choose as between higher and lower ends, but it would, as I 
think, be so without light and sanctions, that its impulses would 
either simply take their turn with others, or be wholly disregarded 
as an impertinence. Such a nature without God would be an 
organ and a function without its proper element and sphere. 
Man is a spirit in the image of God. It is as a spirit preemi- 
nently that he is in that image. God is his supreme end and 
good ; and if this be not known there may be moral phenomena 
as blind gropings, but no working in distinct light, and no moral 
law recognized as supreme. 

Such is the spirit. It gives us a sphere above that of nature, 
in which there is intuition of personality, and of what pertains 
to that ; and in which, emotion is always blended with intuition. 
In it there may be a consciousness of the immediate presence of 
God with us. In it we have a basis for the operation in us of 
the Holy Spirit in liis quickening and sanctifying and comforting 



16 

influences ; and here it is that we find the sphere of those who, 
in the Scriptures, are called spiritual. And as we have seen it 
to be possible for man to concentrate his life in the lower region 
of the body, or again within the on-goings and fixed laws of 
nature, so also is it possible for him to concentrate his life in the 
region of the spirit. He may " live in the spirit, and walk in 
the spirit." He may not only look do\^'nward, and outward, 
but also upward. The failure to do this is the great failure and 
apostasy of man. 

The view just stated seems implied throughout the Bible ; and 
whoever will notice it will find it implied in a large portion of the 
evangelical sermons he hears. If we accept it, besides throwing 
light on important doctrines which cannot now be specified, it 
will give us first, a clear distinction between man and the brutes. 
"We can then give the biTites all that is claimed for them, and 
still not rank with them. Let them generalize, and contrive, 
and even reason if you will, it will yet not be claimed that they 
have the capacity of knowing, or loving, or worshiping God, or 
of working under moral law. It will not be claimed that the 
alternative necessary for moral freedom is possible for them. 
This distinction is of special importance just now. This view 
will also give us a clear distinction between nature and the super- 
natural. Xature is necessitated, spirit is free, and all operation 
of free spirit within nature is supernatural. This is the only 
consistent line that can be drawn. The operation is supernatural, 
but not miraculous. If it be directly by the will of God, and 
the course of nature be reversed or suspended by it, it is a 
miracle, and, if we admit a personal God, any supposition that 
this is impossible is absurd. 

To the view now presented objections may be made — some 
perhaps which would not lie against the common view. It may 
be asked whether the spirit can exist separate from the soul, as 
the soul from the body. It may be said that our Saviour spoke 
of tlie soul rather than of the spirit, asking what a man should 



17 

give in exchange for his soul, and warning us to fear Him who 
can destroy both soul and body in hell. But it is to be said, 
also, that the words spirit, and soul, and their cognates, cannot, 
for the most part, be used interchangeably even in English, and 
that the contrast between the Greek words signifying these is 
much stronger, the word for spirit and its derivatives being 
generally used in a higher sense ; and that after the Holy Spirit 
was given, the use of the word spirit greatly predominates. It 
was his spirit, not his soul, that our Saviour commended into 
the hands of God ; and the first Christian martyr said, " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." No angel, or devil, is said to have a 
soul. They are spirits ; and it is the " spirits of just men " that 
are ** made perfect." 

But this is not the time or the place to consider objections. 
As I have said, it is not essential to all to recognize this distinc- 
tion. But to you, my Beloved Friends of the Graduating Class, 
to you I come to-day, and say to each of you, in the broadest 
import of those words, " Know thyself." Know the law of your 
being as active, and your character under the law. Kjiow also 
the nature and powers of that complex being which God has 
given you, and by which you are fitted to act under such a law. 
As students and thinkers it becomes you to trace all practical 
knowledge back to its roots, all action back to its principles ; 
and the human mind can never rest, and human action can never 
be as complete and consummate as it may be till this shall be 
done. This I exhort you to do fearlessly. Kegarded as active, 
I have taught you a law and system of action drawn as rigidly 
from the constitution as if there were no Bible ; which yet, as I 
think, and as I believe you think, agrees perfectly with the Bible. 
Beginning with the body, and showing how structure has refer- 
ence to ends there, and how the law of action is always deter- 
mined by the end, we passed to the intellect and the moral 
nature, and found the same true there. We thus reached the 

" Law of Love ; " and found that our business in this life is to 
. c 



18 

apply " Love as a Law." Here we found the underlying facts 
of our constitution and the Bible perfectly in accord. But if 
the Moral Philosophy of the constitution corresponds with that 
of the Bible, does not its Mental Philosophy also? So I think. 
Examining the constitution in this aspect of it with the same 
fearlessness, I think we shall be compelled to distinguish between 
the soul and the spirit as philosophers have not yet done, and 
that the crowning science here is not, as has been supposed, a 
Psychology, but a Pneumatology as distinguished from that — a 
science of the spirit with its conditions, and laws, and products, 
as the highest part of man. When we come to know man fully, 
I think we shall know him as body, soul, and spirit ; and that 
thus in Mental, no less than in Moral Philosophy, it will be 
found that the constitution and the Bible are at one. 

But whatever may be thought of this division of our nature by 
the Apostle, and I suspect the Apostle was right, it is certain 
that the three spheres of life based on this division are recognized, 
not only in the Scriptures, as they are most fully, but also by 
mankind generally. These spheres are, First, The Sensual, 
having its seat and centre in the body ; Secondly, The Worldly, 
in which life is centered within the compass of nature and of 
time, and in which, as I suppose, the soul may be greatly culti- 
vated while the spirit is neglected and dwarfed ; and Thirdly, 
The Spiritual, in which man " lives in the spirit, and walks in 
the spirit." In the first of these spheres the appetites bear sway ; 
in the second, the desires ; in the third, the moral and spiritual 
affections. Into these three classes, in Scripture language the 
carnal, the natural, and the spiritual, mankind may be divided. 
These three spheres of life there are, and whatever may be their 
basis in our complex nature, it is to these, my beloved friends, 
that I wish to call your attention as you are about to enter upon 
the new and wider responsibilities of life. 

But is it possible that any one of you shall go down and abide 
on the low plain of animal life, and sink into its indulgencies 



19 

and the vices that riot there? I trust it may not be, and yet it 
is possible. Strange as it may appear, experience and observa- 
tion hardly seem to diminish the number of travelers in this road 
to destruction, and many educated and strong men go in at the 
gate that stands wide open at its entrance. Accordingly, we 
still see gluttons that come to poverty. We still see those who 
" tarry long at the wine," or what they suppose to be wine, and 
who have "wo," and "sorrow," and " contentions," and " bab- 
bling," and "wounds without cause," and "redness of eyes;" 
who say "they have beaten me and I felt it not, when shall I 
awake, I will seek it yet again." Yes, and those lips of the 
strange woman that of old dropped " as an honey comb," and the 
mouth that was " smoother than oil," are speaking still ; and 
the feet that went down to death , and the steps that took hold on 
hell are still traveling the same dreadful way ; and there are 
victims who " mourn at the last when their flesh and their body 
are consumed, and say, How have we hated instruction, and have 
not obeyed the voice of our teachers." But whoever may enter 
this gate of sensuality, be not you of the number. Dally not 
with the allurements at its entrance. "Avoid it, pass not by it, 
turn from it and pass away." 

But if I may be hopeful of your escape from low sensuality, 
what shall I say of worldliness — of that world which the Scrip- 
tures put in opposition to God and to Christ ? " Love not the 
world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man 
love the world the love of the Father is not in him." What 
world is this? As an object of love, it is that world of nature 
and of time of which I have spoken, seen out of its relation to 
God, and idolized. As consisting of persons, it is those who thus 
idolize this world of nature and of time, whether speculatively 
recognizing God or not. They may be formalists, or supersti- 
tious, or skeptics, or even atheists, and yet the radical character 
be the same. Most men love and idolize the world in pursuing 
the ordinary objects of gain and of ambition, but do not justify 



20 

it to themselves. This you will be tempted to do, and this is 
your great danger. But as educated, you may be tempted to do 
it, and to justify it, in the name, and under the authority of 
science ; and the temper of the times requires that you be 
specially guarded against this. 

You live in a day when science is making great progress, and 
you are called upon to advance and honor science. Science is 
simply a knowledge of the works of God as they are revealed 
under uniform laws of succession and construction. This knowl- 
edge the Bible favors. It tells us that " the works of God are 
great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein." Let 
them be thus sought out. They ought to be. But when men 
suppose that science is all ; when they begin to talk about the 
majesty of impersonal law in the place of a personal God ; when, 
instead of making this magnificent and amazing scene of uni- 
formities but the outer court of God's temple, they make it a 
finality, cutting it ofif from the sanctities of religion and the 
higher glories of the upper temple ; they dwarf both it and them- 
selves, and not only make that which is so beautiful in its place 
to be an insolvable enigma, but, as offering itself to meet the 
highest human wants, they make it to be a failure and a deformity. 
Science is good, but with no revealed system to meet the higher 
wants of man it is a pillar crowned by no capital, an avenue ter- 
minated by no mansion ; and ignoring that which is highest, it 
falls back into rejections and pettinesses. There is no narrower 
man, often none more bigoted, than he who thinks that science 
is all. With his spiritual faculties undeveloped, self-complacent 
from defect, plodding and sneering in his little round of unifor- 
mities, he is but half a man. You may see him where scientific 
conventions gather, with his plant-box across his shoulder and his 
geologic hammer in his hand, on his way to spend God's day as 
a naturalist, instead of honoring him by spiritual worship with 
his people ; and as he goes he shall meet a woman aged and blind, 
who can see no plants, who cannot see even him, but whose lips 



21 

move in prayer ; and he shall think of her only as a poor speci- 
men of Natural History ; and he may be the greatest among 
naturalists, and she may be the least in the kingdom of heaven ; 
but she is greater than he. She is greater because she belongs, 
and he does not, to a kingdom of purity and joy and free ser- 
vice, having God for its light and centre, and love for its gravi- 
tating force, and in which science but furnishes the ground under 
their feet from which its subjects may rise into their true life. 
Science is good. It gives control over nature. It is the basis of 
art. It ministers to comfort and to taste. But it eradicates no 
evil passion. It does not reach the deep springs of human action, 
so as to control character ; and hence it can not renovate society. 
It can assuage no grief. It stands at the door of the tomb and 
is dumb. It knows nothing of sin, or of redemption, or of 
prayer and communion with God, or of a judgment day. It 
has not one property of a corner-stone on which you can build 
for eternity. Give science then its place and full scope. Study 
the works of God ; but study them as his works, and so as to 
bring you nearer to Him. 

Nearer to God — that is what we need. God is a spirit. We 
are in his image. A spiritual life pervaded by the worship of 
Him in spirit and in truth is therefore our true life. Away from 
the life of the flesh, and the love of the world, I now call you 
to this. I call you to walk, like one of old, with God. Failing 
of this you will fail of that which is highest, and, severed from 
the source of life, your failure will be final and utter. " To be 
carnally minded is death ; but to be spiritually minded is life and 
peace." If the race could but be lifted up to this, the great 
adjustments needed would take place of themselves. Knowing 
himself, and knowing the Bible as God's provision for his spirit- 
ual life as nature is for his animal life, the higher and lower 
natures of man, man and nature, and nature and the Bible would 
come into accord. Knowledge, and the inventions and power 
that come through that, would be greatly increased. Soliciting 



22 

her by the hand of a more skillful and loving science, man would 
be nourished at the breasts of a nature more plastic and richer 
than now. No longer infidel, like the Hebrew mother of old 
nature would take man as at once her own and her foster child, 
and bring him up for God. The region of spiritual life would 
no longer be, or seem to any, one of mysticism, or uncertainty, 
or gloom. So it was not to the Apostle. So it will not be to 
you, my friends, if, holding body and soul, nature and science 
in their own place, you shall centre your life in the spirit, and 
seek in yourselves and in others the welfare of that. So doing, 
all other ends must fall into subordination to moral and spiritual 
ends, and your first and most urgent need will be seen to be, not 
wealth or honor ; not even what you shall eat, or what you shall 
drink, or wherewithal you shall be clothed ; but that blameless- 
ness of the " whole spirit and soul and body " for which the 
Apostle prays in the text. Guilt, guilt, and not ignorance or 
poverty, you will see to be the great obstacle to be taken out of 
the way. 

And as moral and spiritual ends will subordinate all things to 
themselves in your own life, so will they, as they shape the 
future revealed in the Bible, shape all your expectations of the 
future. You will not look forward, as many do, to the contin- 
uance forever of a nature, embosoming physical science indeed, 
and beautiful in many of its aspects, but yet evidently out of 
harmony with man and sympathising with his unrest. You will 
heed the prophecies in nature herself from former upheavals and 
over-turnings, of another yet to come ; and you will look for this, 
not from any upward movement of blind forces, but from the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will raise the dead, and 
judge the world, and bring in everlasting righteousness. 

Seeing then that we look for " such things " I can do nothing 
better for you my Beloved Friends, as you stand thus on the 
threshhold of new responsibilities, and with the issues of life 
and of death in your hands, than to exhort you, with the Apostle 



23 

Peter, to " be diligent, that you may be found of Him in peace, 
without spot and blameless ; " and to pray, with the Apostle 
Paul, that "your whole spirit, and soul, and body, may be pre- 
served blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 



NOTE. 

The doctrine of the foregoing discourse is not newly adopted by me. 
On the 158th page of my Lectures on Moral Science it is said : — *' Here it 
is that we find the ground and necessity of a threefold division of man into 
body, soul, and spirit, which the Scriptures seem to recognize, and which 
philosophy will be compelled to adopt." The doctrine is now awakening 
increased interest, and I desire to call attention to an able English work 
upon it which I have recently seen, — The " Tripartite Nature of Man," by 
the Rev. J. B. Heard. 



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